


(the only way I know you love me is when you) leave me alone

by perpetualskies



Category: Football RPF
Genre: FIFA World Cup 2014, M/M, Not talking about things, Sleeping next to each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-17 00:41:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14176833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetualskies/pseuds/perpetualskies
Summary: “Davi,” he says, like a lullaby, like the sound of the world falling reluctantly into step, “Davi,” and that’s it.





	(the only way I know you love me is when you) leave me alone

**Author's Note:**

> I somehow managed to get into this pairing two years AFTER the world cup, then two more years passed until I could finish this fic. Offering it to the football gods so that we may all enjoy some more Daviago this summer. Title is from MSMR's "Leave Me Alone". 
> 
> DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction and means no disrespect towards the parties depicted within. Please do NOT share this with the players or anyone associated with them, or repost this work anywhere else.
> 
> Constructive criticism is always appreciated. Comments are love ❤

Germany tilts something into place, absurdly. David feels it hard in his chest, then the back of his knees, the little tremors he has to hide inside his fists. Here he is at the centre of the world while it is moving away from him at a speed impossible to grasp, unfurling into a space no scientist could account for. Thiago doesn’t let go, neither in the tunnel nor in the changing room. He grips his forearm tightly while David’s chest continues to heave, his eyes following the dirt and tears scraped raw across his skin.

“Davi,” he says, like a lullaby, like the sound of the world falling reluctantly into step, “Davi,” and that’s it.

 

David digs the palms of his hands into his eyes and lets Thiago lead the way. There’s solace in that, in letting him be captain again. He’s got the armband bundled up in a pocket somewhere, feels the stretch of it around his arm still, _too fucking tight_. Thiago steers him away from the cameras, across corridors and into elevators, past his own hotel room and into Thiago’s. Inside, Thiago helps him out of his shirt, up up and over his head, there you go, now the shoes. Thiago says, _vem cá_ , and David yields, hands Thiago his phone, lets himself be tipped onto the bed and burrows into him for good. Thiago, he thinks, should be with anyone but him right now. Thiago, he knows, is right here.

 

Time loses itself for a while, loops and loops around, gets stuck on the same glitchy fragments. The sky stays a searing blue, not knowing any other way to grieve. Thiago nudges him into the shower, leaves the door ajar. David cries. Comes crawling back into the bed, an animal, wounded. David hates the broken frame of his mind, the helplessness. Thiago helps him slip beneath the covers, doesn’t say a word.

 

It doesn’t stay quiet for long. One by one, the team comes filing in with beer and pizza and open skype sessions on their phones. They keep drifting in and out of the rooms, the doors left open, they’ve got the whole floor to themselves. No one cares for the non-space between them, piles onto it with their own need to defer the silence that will crawl back in too late at night, too early in the morning. Neymar calls and it makes them _all_ feel like crying.

Shortly past three Marcelo is the last one to retreat to his room. He pats Thiago on the back, cups a hand to David’s cheek and tells him he did well, despite everything. David nods, unable to match the right words and roll them off his tongue, his eyes starting to burn again. He thinks Marcelo knows—knows because it’s what they _all_ know, it’s what they _all_ feel, how they’ve never been more proud to be part of this team, _despite everything._

 

Thiago is still close, emanating a solace so palpable David would not know how to extract himself from it, nor does he want to. Thiago moves to reach for something on the bedside table and David misses the warmth of him instantly, has to fight the urge to reach out for him, needy, helpless like a child. In the quiet that settles around them fatigue presses in with renewed force, strains against his body, pushes along every muscle from within. The room is a bit of a mess, and so is David. Disoriented, he makes to get up. Surely, he has to go _somewhere_ , do _something_ , be someone _other_ than who he is right now—Thiago tugs him back down, warm fingers closing around his wrist, to a place by his side that David, selfishly, has come to think of as distinctly his own.

“Stay,” Thiago says, and David does.

 

They never talk about it, let it lodge between them, soft and cushioning, quiet like a knock on the door past midnight, careful like a free kick balanced on the tip of a boot, that split second of possibility. David’s heart beats fast when he finally lands in Paris, the city rushing at him in abundance, chasing, lapping at him in foreign tongue. The apartment the management chose for him is pristine. He flops onto the bed, all ready-made, one hand diving into a box of cornflakes someone stashed for him in one of the kitchen cabinets, the other reaching for his phone. He dials _Thiago Paris_ , says, “I’ve got a _tub_!” and Thiago laughs, a distinctly Portuguese cadence that falls and disperses across the room, that makes it feel like home already.

 

With time, Thiago’s sleep unfurls familiar, fingers splayed carefully over David’s skin, nose nudged into the crook of his neck, legs swung wide across the bed, ridiculously so. He drapes his body over his like shelter, and David sighs, defenceless, because that is exactly what it is. Sometimes David fights back. Lodges knees and elbows firmly into place, says, _olha, capitão_ , and kisses something chaste into his skin, knows what’s okay in certain time zones, learns when to cede, when to rescind.

 

His sister—God knows how, but she _knows_. “He’s married, _Davi_ ,” she says softly, and David has to look away. He looks down at his nephew balanced in his lap, shakes his curls to make him laugh, to make him reach out and tug, the gentlest little effort.

“We‘re just—” he starts.

“What, Davi?”

“ _Sleeping._ ”

Isabella, bless her, sighs but doesn’t press for more.

 

He calls Thiago that night, stares at the ceiling while the number dials, his mind drawn blank, his heart racing for every and no reason at all. Thiago’s voice is warm, he says he just got out of the shower. The house in the background is quiet. Belle must have put the kids to sleep already.

David thinks of Thiago’s shirts and boxers dug in between his own, and bites his tongue, a little bit too hard, tries not to ask for something that he knows will fall too easy by the wayside. He prays each morning for the blessing of his God, and every night he digs his knees into the carpet for forgiveness. Two or three times a month, he swallows his God and lets him unfurl along the plains of another man’s skin, lets him dip into the small of a back, lets him chart the hollow of a knee, the bending of an elbow. He lets this God of his wrap himself around a name and pushes them off his tongue, wrangled, wrestling with each other, and in the silence that follows, the quiet of the night closing in, it feels both reverent and blasphemous at once.

 

They never talk about it, but sometimes Belle calls late into the night and David’s fingers slip and dig into Thiago’s skin, and sometimes Thiago doesn’t move away, and David thinks—he just thinks, _bastard_ , waits it out and presses close and weighs possessives on a whim.

Sometimes, his mind slips too, and he’s left grappling in the middle of the field, left chasing after some coincidental caress. He looks for Thiago first, a dirty reflex, and Lucas knows, and Maxwell too, and David still pretends there’s nothing there to see.

 

David wakes flustered, his dick pressed hard against the curve of Thiago’s ass. Something from his dream clings sweet, persistent, translates into a single stutter of his hips. The shame comes fast, ugly and immediate, heaves helpless like a sob. Thiago’s body is still slack, his head still nestled on David’s outstretched arm. He catches Thiago’s eye on his way to the bathroom. They do not talk about it still.

 

Pre-season picks them up and drops them halfway across the globe. David lies awake, watching the moon streak sharp against the ceiling. Thiago sighs in his sleep, barely audible. _Thiago_ , David says, _Thiago_ , and shakes him awake. Thiago props himself up on his forearm, looks at him earnestly for a long time, takes in his wobbling lip, the hands that fumble by his side. His thigh slides closer, then hot against and over his own. He takes one of David’s hands, presses it flat against his chest, doesn’t let go.

Thiago says, “Do you want to talk about this?”

David shakes his head, falls flat against all purpose and intent.

 

They’re two games into the new season and just a few days before the closing of the transfer window. When Chelsea calls, David calls back. He packs a suitcase, the rest of his things he will have to come back for later. David knows the news broke when Thiago calls him four times in a row. When David doesn’t pick up, he sends a message:

_Are you serious?_

This isn’t gallant, David knows, isn’t his usual forthcoming self. Isn’t Belo Horizonte either, the way he dragged himself off the pitch, the way he collapsed against the only thing that he was able to make sense of. David vows to make room for himself in London. To dig and claw into the fabric of the city, to push hard into the ranks of his teammates, to trade in streaks of mud and grass and the burning lining of his lungs. He will learn to sleep, and sleep alone. He will learn to turn his phone off at night.

Seven to one is not an easy ratio to carry, is not an easy way to split the night. The cab driver on the way to the airport is quiet. Twice he tunes into the same song. _We don’t talk anymore, we don’t talk anymore, like we used to._ David is still humming it when he reaches the gate.

**Author's Note:**

> "We don't talk anymore," is, of course, a reference to David's deleted Instagram post featuring the same song.


End file.
